The present invention is related to health care and more specifically to a user centered method of assessing functional and physical capacity and evaluating the ability of a person to perform activities of daily living based on health concerns, diseases, disabilities, injuries, surgeries and presenting a continuum of care protocol with ongoing assessments and outcome analysis.
During the past few decades the demand for physical therapy services has risen. These services have typically been limited to exercise therapy under the direct supervision of a medical professional. Injury victims, including those experiencing pain or limited functional capacity or even immobility, commonly see a physical therapist during medical treatment and expect the therapist to address the pain and/or their functional capability that has resulted in reduced mobility. During a typical physical therapy session, the therapist assesses a client's physical situation by reviewing the relevant medical records and by direct assessment of the client. Based on the combination of information gathered from medical background and direct assessment the therapist will provide an exercise protocol along with a plan of care. However, a limitation of providing physical therapy generally is that the therapist and the client need to be located together. This restricts the access of some users to therapists. An alternative solution would be to provide a traveling therapist. However, this places significant time limitations on how many clients a traveling therapist can visit in a day due to time spent traveling.
Yet another alternative is telemedicine. Telemedicine is an idea that has drawn recent attention from military, government, medical professionals, insurers and computer/software specialists. Telemedicine is the provision of health care consultation and education using telecommunication networks to communicate information, and practice medicine via telecommunications and interactive video technology. Telemedicine typically involves the real time or near real-time transfer of medical information between places.
In addition to telephone based services, the Internet has given birth to a variety of sites that provide information to anyone desiring to improve their physical fitness. One such site, iFIT.com, provides for interactive one-on-one personal training. The instructor can walk the user through the training session via a pair of computers, each with video capability. However, this has the limitation of requiring a person to interact with the user and the limitation of the user having the necessary video capability.
Personal on-line training programs or competing in virtual races are also available to users. However, these programs do not take into account the physical condition of the user and do not provide a means for assessing the user's ability prior to providing the exercise program. These on-line training programs allow the user to train at home minus the equipment you would find in the fitness club. However, these program typically do not take into account tailoring a program based on the user's physical condition. Other on-line services provide videos for specific injuries and conditions, but again fail to specifically assess the user's physical condition. For example, various services exist that provide a video library that can be used by users and clinicians to customize exercise programs. For example, patent applications filed include Leeds et al., U.S. Publication No. 2002/0082143, published Jun. 27, 2002, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/360,225, and Leeds et al., U.S. Publication No. 2001/0050088, published Dec. 13, 2001.
Other known systems and methods link a care giver to a user using visual and audio communication. For example, Chen et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,553,609 discloses a network employing audio-visual technology to link a user with a remote care-giver. Data and video are transferred between the caregiver and the user to enable the user to have access to a remote, or multiple remote caregivers. The network includes a database with accessible user information to assist caregivers in diagnosis and treatment. The network relies on bodily condition sensors and other appliances, which may be controllable by the caregiver, to monitor a user. However, such systems are faced with limitations that prevent cost effective delivery of services to users. For example, the video technology, in particular, is remotely controlled to enable the caregiver to visually search particular areas. Another reason for the high cost is that the care giver needs to monitor the user using, for example, the audio technology that enables the caregiver to listen to sounds made by the user.
Known methods of providing physical therapy services are costly and not readily available. Additionally, current systems and methods do not provide a tool that is responsive to surgical needs and related capability of the user as well as the user's capacity. Also individual efforts to comply with an independent assessment program are poor because of inadequate follow-up materials to be reviewed by the user and because of the lack of progression information given to the patient.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and method for user generated exercise prescription that allows a user to self assess based on a specific injury, condition, disease, goal or surgery and generate an exercise protocol, allowing the user to view it and if desired, customize the protocol in accordance with the user's requirements and exercise tools available. Furthermore, there is a need to provide such services cost effectively and make them readily available while taking into consideration the physical condition of the user. There is also a need to enable a user to have their records transferred to various health care providers so that the user may see any of a number of physical therapists without undue burden.